Shopped In Spanish Quotes

I think in general I've never dared compose in Spanish. First of all, it is such an intricate language. ~ Marc Anthony

I am told that César Aira writes two books a year, at least, some of which are published by a little Argentinean company named Beatriz Viterbo, after the character in Borges's story "The Aleph." The books of his that I have been able to find were published by Mondadori and and Tusquets Argentina. It's frustrating, because once you've started reading Aira, you don't want to stop. His novels seem to put the theories of Gombrowicz into practice, except, and the difference is fundamental, that Gombrowicz was the abbot of a luxurious imaginary monastery, while Aira is a nun or novice among the Discalced Carmelites of the Word. Sometimes he is reminiscent of Roussel (Roussel on his knees in a bath red with blood), but the only living writer to whom he can be compared is Barcelona's Enrique Vila-Matas.

Aira is an eccentric, but he is also one of the three or four best writers working in Spanish today. ~ Roberto Bolano

Tourists and transients lived in hotels and motels along the waterfront. Behind them a belt of slums lay ten blocks deep, where the darker half of the population lived and died. On the other side of the tracks - the tracks were there - the business section wore its old Spanish facades like icing on a stale cake. ~ Ross Macdonald

Who was she in high school? Little Miss Nobody. She could have embroidered it on her sweaters, tattooed it across her forehead. And in small letters: i am shit, i am anonymous, step on me. please. She wasn't voted Most Humorous in her high school yearbook or Best Dancer or Most Likely to Succeed, and she wasn't in the band or Spanish Club and when her ten year reunion rolled around nobody would recognize her or have a single memory to share. ~ T.C. Boyle

[The POUM] posters, designed for a wider public (posters are important in Spain, with its large illiterate population). ~ George Orwell

For all the gold and silver stolen and shipped to Spain did not make the Spanish people richer. It gave their kings an edge in the balance of power for a time, a chance to hire more mercenary soldiers for their wars. They ended up losing those wars anyway, and all that was left was a deadly inflation, a starving population, the rich richer, the poor poorer, and a ruined peasant class ~ Hans Koning

Stop," a woman shouted. Everyone turned to see someone in a power suit and sensible pumps stomping out of the trees toward me. It was not Raquel. Raquel was running after her, swearing rapidly in Spanish and trying to grab Anne-Whatever Whatever.
"Wow, you are so not invited," I said. ~ Kiersten White

I am the only British writer who writes in Spanish. ~ Guillermo Cabrera Infante

"Esa chica esta bien caliente." Hector laughed as Rider shook his head. Ainsley stiffened across from me. She was pretty fluent in Spanish and even though Hector was Puerto Rican, I had a feeling she was getting the general gist of whatever he was saying and she was not happy about it. "Me gustaria a llevarla a mi casa y comermela."
Ainsley cocked her head to the side as she brushed her long, blond hair over her shoulder. "Gracias! Pero no hay ni una parte de mi que tu te vas a comer."
Hector's eyes widened.
Rider threw his head back and burst into laughter. "Oh, shit. Priceless."
"What?" Ainsley blinked big eyes at the stunned Hector. "You think some white chick can't possibly understand another language so you're going to sit in front of me and talk about me like I'm not here?" Her smile was brittle and fake. "Bitch, please."
"Man..." Hector sat back, slowly shaking his head as he stared at her. "You're...brutal."
"Damn straight," she replied, her eyes like chips of blue ice. Whatever yumminess she'd seen in Hector was completely out the window now. "And you're a mal criado."
Hector's eyes narrowed.
"I really like your friend, Mouse." Still chuckling, Rider winked at me. "She basically called him a classless ass, and I agree. ~ Jennifer L. Armentrout

FLY A HELICOPTER? SURE, WHY NOT. Leo had done plenty of crazier things that week. The sun was going down as they flew north over the Richmond Bridge, and Leo couldn't believe the day had gone so quickly. Once again, nothing like ADHD and a good fight to the death to make time fly. Piloting the chopper, he went back and forth between confidence and panic. If he didn't think about it, he found himself automatically flipping the right switches, checking the altimeter, easing back on the stick, and flying straight. If he allowed himself to consider what he was doing, he started freaking out. He imagined his Aunt Rosa yelling at him in Spanish, telling him he was a delinquent lunatic who was going to crash and burn. Part of him suspected she was right. "Going okay?" Piper asked from the copilot's seat. She sounded more nervous than he was, so Leo put on a brave face. ~ Rick Riordan

There's your problem," Leo announced.
Jason scratched his head. "Uh.... what are we looking at?"
Leo thought it was pretty obvious, but Piper looked confused too.
"Okay," Leo sighed, " you want the full explanation or the short explanation?"
"Short," Piper and Jason said in unison.
Leo gestured to the empty core. "The syncopator goes here. It's a multi-access gyro-valve to regulate flow. The doxen glass tubes on the outside? Those are filled with powerful,dangerous stuff. That glowing red one is Lemnos fire from my dad's forges. This murky stuff here? That's water from the River Styx. The stuff in the tubes is going to power the ship, right? Like radioactive rods in a nuclear reactor. But the mix ratio has to be controlled, and the timer is already operational.... That means without the syncopator, this stuff is all going to vent into the chamber at the same time, in sixty-five minutes. At that point, we'll get a very nasty reaction."
Jason and Piper stared at him. Leo wondered if he'd been speaking English. Sometimes when he was agitated he slipped into Spanish, like his mom used to do in her workshop. But he was pretty sure he'd used English.
"Um..." Piper cleared her throat." Could you make the short explanation shorter?"
Leo palm-smacked his forehead. "Fine. One hour. Fluids mix. Bunker goes ka-boom. One square mile of forest tuns into a smoking crater."
"Oh," Piper said in a small voice. "Can't you just..... turn it off?"< ~ Rick Riordan

Lily Owens: If your favorite color is blue, why did you paint the house pink?
August Boatwright: [chuckles] That was May's doing. When we went to the paint shop, she latched on to a color called, "Caribbean Pink." She said it made her feel like dancing a Spanish Flamenco. I personally thought it was the tackiest color I had ever seen, but I figured if it could lift May's heart, it was good enough to live in.
Lily Owens: That was awfully nice of you.
August Boatwright: Well, I don't know. Some things in life, like the color of a house, don't really matter. But lifting someone's heart? Now, that matters. ~ Sue Monk Kidd

Forget about that and kiss me," I say.
I weave my hands in her hair. She wraps her arms around my neck as I trace the valley between her lips with my tongue. Parting her lips, I deepen the kiss. It's like a tango, first moving slow and rhythmic and then, when we're both panting and our tongues collide, the kiss turns into a hot, fast dance I never want to end. Carmen's kisses may have been hot, but Brittany's are more sensual, sexy, and extremely addictive.
We're still in the car, but it's cramped and the front seats don't give us enough room. Before I know it, we've moved to the backseat. Still not ideal, but I hardly notice.
I'm so getting into her moans and kisses and hands in my hair. And the smell of vanilla cookies. I'm not going to push her too far tonight. But without thinking, my hand slowly moves up her bare thigh.
"It feels so good," she says breathlessly.
I lean her back while my hands explore on their own. My lips caress the hollow of her neck as I ease down the strap to her dress and bra. In response, she unbuttons my shirt. When it's open, her fingers roam over my chest and shoulders, searing my skin.
"You're . . . perfect," she pants.
Right now I'm not gonna argue with her. Moving lower, my tongue follows a path down to her silky skin exposed to the night air. She grabs the back of my hair, urging me on. She tastes so damn good. Too good. !Caramelo!
I pull away a few inches and capture her gaze with mine, those shining ~ Simone Elkeles

Motherfuckers will read a book that's one third Elvish, but put two sentences in Spanish and they [white people] think we're taking over. ~ Junot Diaz

You know those short, brown-toned South American immigrants that pick your fruit, slaughter your meat, and bus your tables? Would you - a respectable person with a middle-class upbringing - ever consider going on a date with one of them? It's a rude question, because it affects to inquire into what everyone gets to know at the cost of forever leaving it unspoken. But if you were to put your unspoken thoughts into words, they might sound something like this: Not only are these people busing the tables, slaughtering the meat, and picking the fruit; they are the descendants of the people who bused the tables, slaughtered the meat, and picked the fruit of the Aztecs and Incas. The Spanish colonisers slaughtered or mixed their blood with the princes, priests, scholars, artisans, warriors, and beautiful women of the indigenous Americas, leaving untouched a class of Morlocks bred for good-natured servility and thus now tailor-made to the demands of an increasingly feudal postindustrial America. That's, by the way, part of the undertow of the immigration debate, the thing that makes an honest appraisal of the issue impossible, because you can never put anything right without first admitting you're in the wrong. ~ Wesley Yang

I spent ten years in London; I trained there. But because I started in English, it kind of feels the most natural to me, to act in English, which is a strange thing. My language is Spanish; I grew up in Argentina. I speak to my family in Spanish, but if you were to ask me what language I connect with, it'd be English in some weird way. ~ Juan Pablo Di Pace

It is a sort of quasi-monastic diabolical vision. In a landscape populated with larvae - flowing and undulating larvae called forth like a cascade of leeches by tolling bells - three female figures rise up phantasmally, enshrouded with gauze like Spanish madonnas. They are the 'three brides': the bride of Heaven, the bride of the Earth and the bride of Hell...

The bride of Hell, with her two serpents writhing about her temples to hold her veil in place, has the most attractive mask: the most profound eyes, the most vertiginous smile that one could ever see.

If she existed, how I would love that woman! I feel that if that smile and those eyes were in my life they would be all the cure I need!

I could never tire of the study and contemplation of that hallucinatory visage.

"The Three Brides" is very peculiar in its detail and composition. It is the whimsy of a dream rendered with astonishing fastidiousness: the delusion of an opium-smoker composed in the style of Holbein. ~ Jean Lorrain

Well, I drank enough to sustain a small Spanish village, I haven't had an orgasm in a thousand years, and I will probably die old and alone in a beautifully designed apartment with all of Clive's illegitimate children swarming around me ... How do you think I feel? ~ Alice Clayton

It's like a jumble of huts in a jungle somewhere. I don't understand how you can live there. It's really, completely dead. Walk along the street, there's nothing moving. I've lived in small Spanish fishing villages which were literally sunny all day long everyday of the week, but they weren't as boring as Los Angeles. ~ Truman Capote

Thanks," he said. "De nada," said Julius. "What does that mean?" said Charlie. "It's nothing, in Spanish." said Julius. "I mean, it means nothing, the word nothing, not that it doesn't mean anything, though of course it doesn't mean anything, it means something: it means nothing. Nothing is what it means. Not that it doesn't mean anything." "No, it means nothing, I know what you mean." said Charlie with a straight face. They started to giggle. ~ Zizou Corder

The minority of Mexicans who are aware of their own selves do not make up a closed or unchanging class. They are the only active group, in comparison with the Indian-Spanish inertia of the rest, and ever day they are shaping the country more and more into their own image. ~ Octavio Paz

But I think the first real change in women's body image came when JLo turned it butt-style. That was the first time that having a large-scale situation in the back was part of mainstream American beauty. Girls wanted butts now. Men were free to admit that they had always enjoyed them. And then, what felt like moments later, boom - Beyoncé brought the leg meat. A back porch and thick muscular legs were now widely admired. And from that day forward, women embraced their diversity and realized that all shapes and sizes are beautiful. Ah ha ha. No. I'm totally messing with you. All Beyonce and JLo have done is add to the laundry list of attributes women must have to qualify as beautiful. Now every girl is expected to have Caucasian blue eyes, full Spanish lips, a classic button nose, hairless Asian skin with a California tan, a Jamaican dance hall ass, long Swedish legs, small Japanese feet, the abs of a lesbian gym owner, the hips of a nine-year-old boy, the arms of Michelle Obama, and doll tits. The person closest to actually achieving this look is Kim Kardashian, who, as we know, was made by Russian scientists to sabotage our athletes. ~ Tina Fey

I found out about the Spanish war because I was in Germany when it began. ~ Martha Gellhorn

For Padilla the shared act of smoking was basically a staging of loneliness: the tough guys, the talkers, the quick to forget and the long to remember, lost themselves for an instant, the length of time it took the cigarette to burn, an instant in which time was frozen and yet all times in Spanish history were concentrated, all the cruelty and the broken dreams, and in that "night of the soul" the smokers recognized each other, unsurprised, and embraced. The spirals of smoke were the embrace. ~ Roberto Bolano

Well, my first languages are German and Spanish because I was brought up by a Spanish mother and a German father, so I always spoke both languages at home. I'm very thankful that I was brought up in a bilingual house. ~ Daniel Bruhl

For years, I wanted to know if there was one person, one voice, one individual inside me. All my life people would call me a chink or a chigger. I couldn't listen to hip-hop and be myself without people questioning my authenticity. Chinese people questioned my yellowness because I was born in America. The white people questioned my identity as an American because I was yellow.
No black or Spanish person ever called me chigger, but hustling all of a sudden got white people off my back. I was the same dude with a different job, but now I was finally "authentic" to white people, and it made me realized it's all a trap. We can't fucking win. If I follow the rules and play the model minority, I'm a lapdog under a bamboo ceiling. If I like hip-hop because I see solidarity, I'm aping. But, if I throw it all away, shit on my parents, sell weed, pills, and strike fear into unsuspecting white boys with stunt Glocks, now I's authentic? Fuck you, America. (171) ~ Eddie Huang

They said that President Bush's war in Iraq has cost the former Spanish Prime Minister his job. So President Bush isn't losing American jobs anymore, he's branching out to other countries. ~ Jay Leno

Born in St. Petersburg, Russia, my wife speaks five languages: Russian, English, French, Italian and, out of self-defense, Spanish. I watched her learn Spanish in three months. ~ Cheech Marin

I didn't ever consider poetry the province exclusively of English and American literature and I discovered a great amount in reading Polish poetry and other Eastern European poetry and reading Russian poetry and reading Latin American and Spanish poetry and I've always found models in those other poetries of poets who could help me on my path. ~ Edward Hirsch

People will, in a great degree, and not without reason, form their opinion of you upon that which they have of your friends; and there is a Spanish proverb which says vry justly, 'Tell me whom you live with, and I will tell you who you are.' ~ Lord Chesterfield

We had to scramble for seats in the day coach, lugging one straw valise between us and a gallon jug of lemonade. And a thermos bottle of the kind the Spanish-American War soldiers carried, with our own well water for brushing our teeth. We'd heard that St. Louis water comes straight out of the Mississippi River, and there's enough silt in it to settle at the bottom of the glass. We'd go to their fair, but we weren't going to drink their water. ~ Richard Peck

The poulterers' shops were still half open, and the fruiterers' were radiant in their glory. There were great, round, pot-bellied baskets of chestnuts, shaped like the waistcoats of jolly old gentleman, lolling at the doors, and tumbling out into the street in their apoplectic opulence. There were ruddy, brown-faced broad-girthed Spanish onions, shining in the fatness of their growth like Spanish friars, and winking from their shelves in wanton slyness at the girls as they went by, and glanced demurely at the hung-up mistletoe. There were pears and apples, clustered high in blooming pyramids; there were bunches of grapes, made, in the shopkeepers' benevolence, to dangle from conspicuous hooks, that people's mouths might water gratis as they passed; there were piles of filberts, mossy and brown, recalling, in their fragrance, ancient walks among the woods, and pleasant shufflings ankle deep through withered lanes; there were Norfolk Biffins, squab and swarthy, setting off the yellow of the oranges and lemons, and, in the great compactness of their juicy persons, urgently entreating and beseeching to be carried home in paper bags and eaten after dinner. ~ Charles Dickens

I grew up in a highly Hispanic neighborhood. It was very rare to find any race other than Mexicans. I feel very comfortable around Spanish speakers and people from Mexico and people who don't always feel comfortable living in the U.S. because they are in fear of being deported. ~ Emily Rios

I went to Mexico for three months after college and studied Spanish there. And I went to Cuba and studied at the University of Havana. I loved studying in other countries. ~ Andrea Navedo

In my 30s, I wrote in the back house of a ramshackle Spanish Revival we rented across from the ocean in the Santa Monica Canyon. I wrote thousands of pages there, but in order to see another adult human being, I had to steal out through the brambly side of the house, along the driveway down to the street. ~ Mona Simpson

The diagnosis shouldn't have surprised me, as we had been talking about my symptoms for so long. But it's easier to think you just have a bunch of parts inside. Everyone says things like "A part of me wants to go to the movies, but another part of me wants to just stay home." Using the term "part" made me feel normal. I knew I was a little different in that my parts were quite separate aspects of me. I knew my consciousness wasn't whole and knew that it was unusual to have some thoughts come to me in Spanish. I knew most people didn't experience terror and struggle to catch their breath when they were in benign situations. But we hadn't been calling this DID, so I'd been able to avoid fully accepting the implications of having these special parts. ~ Olga Trujillo

I'm a writer. In Latin America, they say I'm a Latin-American writer because I also write in Spanish and my books are translated, but I am an American citizen and my books are published here, so I'm also an American writer. ~ Isabel Allende

Sin looked over at Boyd through sleepy looking, heavy lidded eyes. "Callate la boca, blanquito."
Hearing Sin speak Spanish didn't help any; he sounded especially sexy when he was drawling those words fluidly in his low, velvety voice. "What does that mean?" he asked, half with an edge and half just curious.
Full lips turned up into a small smirk and Sin raised an eyebrow at him before turning back to the window. "It's a secret."
"Putain de beau gosse," Boyd muttered under his breath in mild annoyance, flipping forward several pages. ~ Santino Hassell

I bought a self learning record to learn Spanish. I turned it on and went to sleep; the record got stuck. The next day I could only stutter in Spanish. ~ Steven Wright

The shrieks were coming from two quite naked girls, who were pursued by a pair of apes snapping at their bottoms. [...] So he now raises his double-barrelled Spanish rifle, fires and kills both apes. 'God be praised, my dear Calambo! I have delivered these two poor creatures from grave peril; if it was a sin to kill an Inquisitor and a Jesuit, I have made ample amends by saving the lives of two girls [...]'
He was about to continue, but words failed him when he saw the two girls throw their arms lovingly around the two apes and collapse in tears over their corpses, filling the air with the most pitiful lamentations. 'I was not expecting quite so much tenderness of heart,' he said at last to Cacambo, who replied: 'You've excelled yourself this time, Master; you have just despatched the two lovers of these young ladies.' '-Their lovers! Is it possible? You're making fun of me, Cacambo; how could anyone believe in such a thing?' - 'My dear Master,' retorted Cacambo, 'you are always astounished by everything; why do you find it so strange that in some countries it is apes who enjoy the favours of young ladies? After all, they are one-quarter human, just as I am one-quarter Spanish. ~ Voltaire

Let's see what happens when a coercive system takes on an open system. The Spanish (a centralized body) had been used to seeing everything through the lens of a centralized, or coercive, system. When they encountered the Apaches, they went with the tactics that had worked in the past (the take the gold and kill the leader strategy) and started eliminating Nant'ans. But as soon as they killed one off, a new Nant'an would emerge. The strategy failed because no one person was essential to the overall well-being of Apache society. ~ Ori Brafman

Then I speak to her in a language she has never heard, I speak to her in Spanish, in the tongue of the long, crepuscular verses of Díaz Casanueva; in that language in which Joaquín Edwards preaches nationalism. My discourse is profound; I speak with eloquence and seduction; my words, more than from me, issue from the warm nights, from the many solitary nights on the Red Sea, and when the tiny dancer puts her arm around my neck, I understand that she understands. Magnificent language! ~ Pablo Neruda

In Lisbon, a street cry gloated over the Spanish defeat: Which ships got home? The ones the English missed. And where are the rest? The waves will tell you. What happened to them? It is said they are lost. Do we know their names? They know them in London. Oh, ~ Margaret George